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Congratulations! You have taken the first step in learning how to play my FAVORITE instrument: the guitar! Welcome to Part One of this Mission Statement Series. Here you'll discover what I'm all about, why I'm a different kind of teacher and what makes me a passionate teacher and coach. I'm excited to meet you! I would love for you to leave a comment below leaving me your thoughts and your own introductions!

Motivation.Definition: "the general desire or willingness of someone to do something."Synonyms: enthusiasm, drive, ambition, initiative, determination

What drives you?What are you determined to accomplish?What is the end game for you?What are your goals?

These are all important questions we must answer when setting out on a new venture. Especially when learning a new instrument, language, etc, we MUST define our motivations for choosing to learn something new.

Learning how to play the guitar, and play it well, is similar to training to run a marathon.

It takes drive, ambition, initiative and determination. Do you ever think that those runners ever experience a moment where they want to give up? Perhaps when their body loses energy and wants to collapse. Perhaps when they get sick and can't train for a few days. Perhaps when an unexpected injury happens and their body gets out of shape. I don't doubt that these runners have to battle some very intense doubts and fears as they train for months and months and beat their bodies into submission.

In the same way, there will be days where your fingers will hurt, you won't be able to play clear notes, you will feel overwhelmed and ready to give up. You have plenty of other things begging for your attention, anyway. Without defining your motivations beforehand, it will be easy to succumb to your temptations to give up and do something else.

First you must define your Internal Motivations.There will be times when you're just beginning, you don't want to practice the guitar. There will be times where you want to give up because it's hard. Internal motivation is what will keep you going when times get tough. Here's a few examples:

You feel the NEED to be at a point where you can feel comfortable playing the guitar in front of people.

You desperately want to write songs that appeal to people in your favorite genre.

You expect yourself to be able to play Christmas songs and sing with your family around the holidays.

DEFINE these Internal Motivations to keep yourself on the right track when the road gets hard.

Next you must define your External Motivations.When your internal motivations fail, (and they can!), you need to set up some external support to help you along the way.

Relationships - The relationships you have should spur you on to become a better musician and guitar player. You should ideally be surrounded by like-minded people who will make you strive to grow and mature as a well rounded musician.

Accountability - This is a word a lot of people hate. To be accountable to something or someone means we are going to SUBMIT (another word people hate) to that person. When you know you have somebody to give a report to, it is really motivating!

When you're first learning how to play the guitar, it can be an exciting time. But the honeymoon phase can quickly go away when you realize that it's not as easy as you imagined it would be. That's why you MUST define your internal and external motivations so you can keep yourself going when the road gets hard.

If you have Internal Motivation, but really need help with External Motivation, that's where the Burrows Guitar Academy can really help. My passion is to see students grow and become the musicians they always wanted to become. I do that by giving my students a structure to learn with, building relationship with them, coaching them and keeping them accountable through that process. If you're interested in Private Guitar Lessons or Online Guitar Lessons, feel free to fill out my registration form online at www.burrowsguitaracademy.com/registration.